Like a shotgun, I can't be undone
by recycled-stars
Summary: AU based on spoilers for The Blue Butterfly. Kate Beckett is building her own future when Richard Castle's latest investigation starts to get in the way.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Notes: This is the first part of something I started writing back at Christmas for Syd15 at Livejournal, who requested it as a gift after the first(ish?) spoilers for the noir episode were released. It's been fed by what we've learned since, but the original concept remains intact, so it features a black-and-white AU version of Castle and Beckett. It's roughly set in 1935, so the historical context will be different. (But again, 1947 wasn't the magic number when I started out. And strip clubs became illegal in New York in 1937, so when the show threw out that date it wasn't reworkable with the plot.) I confess, it's a little dark because sometimes I think about feminism and then I get sad when I think about history. But there is love and redemption and a happy ending, I promise.

Also written as a one shot (sort of), but posting in parts because it's getting kind of long and I feel like I bombard people with text quite often enough around here. It'll be four or five parts all told.

* * *

><p>The Blue Butterfly is the wrong kind of dance club down on a street in the wrong part of New York City. The door is non-descript during the day, when only hardened regulars make their way down the staircase that has seen better days, into the haze of cigarette smoke and perfume and the lingering smell of last night's spilled whiskey.<p>

Doors open at eleven.

The first show is at twelve.

The girls work hard and she knows the lunchtime shift is the worst, because she used to be one of them.

The bar isn't truly mahogany, but it's a fair imitation of it. The pad of one finger is running across a groove in the lacquered pine as she thinks that lots of things pass for the real thing around here. It's all about illusions, cheap drinks and cheap intimacy. It's hard times out there, but down here, the girls take off their clothes and Montgomery picks out tunes on the off-key piano and everyone pretends that the twenties never stopped roaring.

She twists her glass between her hands. It's vodka, straight, over ice, but if anyone asks she'll tell them it's water. (It's not lady-like to drink before the cocktail hour. Then again, it's not lady-like to do any number of things she's been paid to do in the past. It's never stopped her.)

Mike Royce is the bartender, always an archetype of the profession: as he finishes up with a customer he sidles over to her drying a glass.

"Cheer up kid," he tells her as she swallows a mouthful of liquor, neat, without flinching. "Whatever it is, it can't be so bad."

(Royce has always managed to skirt the line between father-figure and lover, and his advice is sometimes sentimental, but he means wells, looks out for her. She doesn't have many friends, but she considers him one of her best.)

She makes a face. "I'm sitting around here marking time in this joint aren't I?"

"And how's that different from any other Thursday?"

She drains the glass and sets it down on the counter with a smack. "That's the problem," she says. "It's not."

Behind her, Jimmy is snapping his fingers and drawling out, "Chop chop doll, I don't got all day."

She can tell without turning around that the deal hasn't gone well and he'll be mean all afternoon.

Royce waves away her money. "He's your problem kid."

She shrugs, because he's right and she knows it, but Jimmy's got cush and most men don't these days, and it's still a helluva lot easier than anything else she might occupy her time with.

Besides, she's got a plan.

* * *

><p>At night, there's a neon sign that flickers on and off, blue light buzzing, illuminating the alley and drawing business. She stubs out a cigarette beneath her heel as it casts her profile in indigo shadow. There's an envelope tucked into the pocket of her coat with instructions for one of Jimmy's boys. She's read them of course, committed them to memory, even though it never pays to know too much with mobsters. She can feign ignorance and you never know when a little dirt might be useful.<p>

The sigh as she takes the first step down into the club is swallowed by jazz.

Either Royce keeps a fresh martini just the way she likes it beneath the bar at all times or he has an eerie sixth sense. Either way, when her coat is safely stowed away, he hands her a drink. This time he takes her money and, under the guise of giving her change, passes her a wad of notes.

She frowns, "It's too much."

"It's not." Royce frowns back. "Don't grift him on my behalf kid. I do alright."

With a small shrug, her gloved fingers tuck the money into a small split in the lining of her clutch. "Have you seen Coonan?"

"Not tonight. Only one who's remarkable is that suit in the front. He hasn't been in before."

She follows his gaze, nods. "Well. Newcomers are always good for business."

"Maybe," Royce says. She infers from his tone that this stranger might mean an upset. It piques her interest.

When the bartender turns to serve another customer, her gloved fingers close around the stem of her drink and she sips at it, spears the olive and raises it to her lips in a poor tribute to an evening meal.

Her eyes travel the room and she waits.

Only part of her business is done, but Marla knows where to find her and Royce is right, Coonan is nowhere to be seen. The dancer appears first, smiles, and they exchange talk until another wad of money changes hands. She peels off a few bills and hands them back. "You should keep this."

"_Kate_." Marla has her hands on her hips.

"Don't be a daft Marla. The girls need it more than he does."

"He'll be mean about it."

"You let me worry about that."

Surreptitiously she slips the bills into the top of her stockings beneath her skirt and the conversation ends, because Marla has to get back stage.

Before she sees she _senses_ someone watching her. When she looks up, their mysterious stranger is at the other end of the bar and knows she's caught him looking, and he smiles at her instead of looking away. His eyes are tracking her body but it's not the idle gaze of desire – it settles where other men's eyes might but it wanders from there – and when she stares him down she sees she has found an equal, that he is sizing her up and puzzling her out just as she is him.

Beckett gives him an inviting grin in return, lets her hair fall over her shoulder and takes a seat at an empty table closest to the shadowy corner she occupies.

Moments later, he joins her.

(That smile is bait and most men take it, but she has the sense he's only toying with the idea of her hook.)

They're facing the stage, not each other.

"A fresh face," she says, conversationally. Her eyes dart sideways, glance over his face but he catches her at it. "I haven't seen you before."

"No," he responds, evenly, holding her eyes. "You haven't."

"You've been watching me for almost as long as I've been here," she accuses, but it's light, playful and there's only a hint of the steel behind it that he hears.

"Yes." He smiles. "But you must be used to that."

"I find that being watched by strange men is something one never gets used to."

"Forgive me then." He holds out a hand. "Richard Castle."

Her eyes narrow and she appraises him for a long moment before she takes his hand, shakes it like one of Jimmy's boys would. "Katherine Beckett."

Even beneath her gloves, she can tell his fingers are warm and he brushes a thumb over her knuckles before he drops her hand.

"So." She pulls her hand back into her lap and runs the fingers of the other over it to smooth over the memory of the contact. "What brings you to the Butterfly Mister Castle?"

"Just the usual. I was told there would be beautiful women –"

His smile is suggestive as he says it, and for a moment she forgets to be anything but _flattered_. She blinks because it surprises her. It's been a very long time since she wasn't immune to sweet talking from men.

"– I wasn't misled."

She has been the sole object of his focus since before they spoke which tells her two things: his real intent is something he feels the need to hide and he is the dangerous kind of charming (the kind that she normally fancies herself).

The honest edge to it is the worst (or best) part, because his curiosity is genuine when he asks her, "What about you Miss Beckett?"

It has also been a long time since she's been addressed as anything except _a real looker doll _or _honey you are one ripe tomato_. But she dissects his expression with precision because it's as though somehow he _knew_ to show off his manners, knew that she'd soften at the formality. She's not sure she likes being read as well as she reads people.

"Royce mixes a mean martini," is the excuse she offers him.

They make eyes at each other over their drinks, each knowing the other is lying, sharing conspiratorial smiles. Royce is right, he's probably going to make trouble, but a part of her has always been drawn to such disasters. And besides, this silent poker game they've started playing is the first surprise she's had in months.

The thrill of something entirely _new_ is in her step the entire way home.

* * *

><p>Jimmy's out when she gets in. She unwraps herself from her coat in the hall and removes her earrings, holding them in her palm as her shoes make noise against the wooden floors. The house is dark and hers is the only noise; she enjoys the solitude.<p>

She has changed out of her dress and is unpinning her hair in the mirror when he finally stumbles in, fresh with whiskey and cigarette smoke and that means poker, but he's smirking, so that means he won. She turns her head and smiles at him in greeting.

"Did yer get the job done?" he asks.

"Not tonight," she tells him, playing with fire because he's drunk, and he's never been shy with his fists. "Coonan didn't show."

Jimmy scowls, lights a cigarette. "You were probably distracted by your whore friends."

"_Hey_, whatever they do for it, they keep you in money."

"Speaking of." He holds out his hand and she deposits a wad of bills into it, his share of Royce's takings and a cut of the girls'. He sucks on the cigarette while he counts it with both hands and she holds her breath, listening to the brush of paper on paper and waiting.

"Three hundred bucks. You gotta be kidding me Katie." He glares at her in the mirror and she flinches when he calls her that; it belongs to her father and she hates it when this man borrows it from a good one. "Lord knows I ain't the smartest, but I ain't that stupid and I know when I'm being played."

She knows for a fact and all the illegal card games he's taken her to that that statement is a lie.

"Takings are down Jimmy. You read the papers. They don't call it a Great Depression for nothing."

"You've been lettin' the girls keep their tips again."

"They _earned_ them."

He's rough when he's angry and he pulls her up from the vanity by the elbow, yanking too hard. Struggling makes it worse, but not struggling adds insult to injury so she does. When he shoves her into it, she falls against the mattress, glares at him in the mirror while he sweeps half of her things to the floor. Most of them are gifts, things he buys her to apologise for outbursts like this, and there are few she cares about. He knows what they are though, makes sure the box with her mother's ring in it and her father's watch falls first, so hard that the lid pulls free of one of its hinges and the glass face of the wristwatch cracks.

And then he turns to her, grips her chin between his thumb and forefinger and jerks her face up to look at him when she hides it behind her hair. She knows he's a violent man, has known, since the first, and sometimes he hits her but most times he doesn't.

Like tonight, most times he sees something on her face – fear or sadness or maybe she just looks like his mother – and sinks to his knees in front of her, petting her hair, crying, saying _you make me so mad sometimes_ and _I'm so sorry baby_ over and over.

She gives him a contrite and pitying look, smooths her thumb over his cheek and hugs him against her shoulder.

Sometimes she thinks he doesn't really _want_ to be the way he is, that he's like her in lots of ways because like her, life has never really given him a choice.

* * *

><p>In the morning, she takes three crisp bills from beneath the loose floorboard in the hall and walks down to the end of the block where Mister Fischer fixes things. He used to be a watchmaker, but his business has expanded since the crash, whatever helps make ends meet.<p>

She puts the pieces of the box and the wrist watch on the counter and waits until he looks up from his book. It has a German title. (He hides his accent well, but she's always known he was an immigrant. She wonders sometimes, what he has seen.)

"Miss Beckett," he says, regarding her over the tops of his glasses. "Or am I dreaming?"

She rewards him with a look that humours him and dismisses his flattery at the same time. And then she laughs, once. "Henry, stop it, you'll break my heart."

"Ma'am, I would not."

"Can you fix the box again?"

"I have told you before, you have to get a hold on those clumsy fingers of yours."

She nearly tells him that her fingers aren't clumsy, never have been, that as a matter of fact, she's rather good with her hands. But he thinks she's sweet, sees an innocence in her that she's sure she's lost, and it's not work. She charms for business, not pleasure. "I guess I do."

He eyes her, and she gets the sudden sense that the old man can see right through her stories.

"It must belong to someone special for you to keep coming back like this."

She lays a ten dollar bill on the counter, far more than the work is worth, but Mister Fischer respects her, even though everyone in the neighbourhood knows the truth about Jimmy and everyone in the neighbourhood knows the truth about her. Maybe it's because he knows something of belonging nowhere, of always being outside. She's always had the sense that unlike most men, he isn't simply charmed by her looks.

"It belonged to my mother," she tells him.

"Well I'm sorry to hear that Miss," he says, the wisdom of years showing in the way he interprets her words. "Because I gather by your tone that's she's no longer with us."

"No." Her voice is measured. "She's not."

They share a moment of silent sympathy, each knowing what it is like to lose family to tragedy.

* * *

><p><em>tbc<em>


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Notes: Wow, I'm a little shocked by how many e-mails I had this morning from people favouriting and story alerting and reviewing - thank you all. I'm guessing you're all terribly excited for the episode tonight (aren't we all?), but if you need something to help pass the meantime, here's part two.

* * *

><p>The next night, Richard Castle is back at the Butterfly, leaning against a wall in the back, unobtrusive to most but a standout to her. (She knows this room, and that spot has a view of the audience but not of the stage.)<p>

Magnetism draws his eyes up when she enters, and her fingers curl in her gloves in a half-greeting.

He nods.

Royce is looking between them as she approaches the bar and she knows he's seen it all, is foretelling the future far before he _should_.

She clucks her tongue. "Take a hike Royce. You think too much."

"Kid, he's going to make trouble for you."

"Trouble is something I'm used to."

Royce shrugs. That's probably true.

"So give me the lowdown."

"On our new patron?"

"No, on the president." She presses her lips together. "Yes. On this Mister Castle."

"Not for nothing, but I think he's sniffing around-"

"- into something he shouldn't be," she finishes the sentence for him. "I thought so as well. Do you know any more than squat?"

"The whispers are he's a private dick. And he asked me about you."

She narrows her eyes at him. "Baloney."

"On the level."

"Do you know anything _useful_?"

"Likes his whiskey."

"Pour me one."

"Oh Katie." Royce grins at her. "You're stuck on him."

"I _am not_."

He looks far too knowing as he pushes her drinks across the bar. "Whatever you say kid. Whatever you say."

She does her best to prove Royce wrong, but their sporting repartee about nothing in particular feels more like a kind of verbal foreplay than any kind of real argument. In fact, the only thing about him that makes her frustrations genuine is that she can't get a serious response out of him when she asks him again why he's there.

_To see you_.

She frowns at his answer like there is a right one and that is absolutely not it.

Beckett likes to know what goes on at the Butterfly, likes to stay one step ahead of Jimmy and his boys.

It's part of her plan and despite appearances, she has a lot to lose.

* * *

><p>Jimmy is waiting in the front room of the apartment when she gets in but the lights aren't on. She sets her keys and her purse down on the hall table and takes off her shoes, one, then the other, holds them in her hand so the clack of heels doesn't wake him. When she flips on the light, he moves and it scares her half to death.<p>

"You find Coonan?" he asks.

"No dice." Her hand is at her chest. She waits for his response, catching air until the shock fades.

"Still? That kid better pray someone's killed him already."

"You've got bigger problems though." She sighs, sinks into an armchair opposite, but moves when he gestures for her. This is a part of the informal contract implicit in their relationship, a begrudging symbiosis almost on both parts.

She thinks they might have loved each other once, when she was younger, not in any real way but with the fascination of children: her like a school girl with a crush, him with the eyes a boy reserves for a shiny new toy. Some of the gloss has faded – she's older, wiser and less youthful in appearance – but still, he hasn't left her yet. Sometimes she thinks he needs her in a way she doesn't need him: to tell him that he's a fine upstanding citizen when his Catholic guilt becomes too much for confession alone to bear, to help him pretend that this is how domesticity should be.

Still, they manage, he keeps her in nice things and she keeps him in business and silently works at her own agenda. (She's too smart not to have one.) And most days she doesn't regret not becoming a typist or a switchboard operator or sticking with the job at the Butterfly.

The weight of his arm presses down against her shoulder and she tries to ignore it for as long as she can when his hands start to wander. "There's a private dick lurking around."

Jimmy's hands are suddenly being kept to himself. "What's he asking questions about?"

"Mike says nothing yet, or at least, he can't make head or tail of it."

"What about you?"

He's giving her a hard, scrutinising look, one she recognises as a prelude to jealousy.

(It's not just because she's property to him. There's insecurity behind it as well, like he knows he's buying her and there'll be no reason for her to stay if someone else starts paying. It's true but it's not. She's always had her reasons.)

Beckett lifts a shoulder, leans back against the sofa, closes her eyes and assuages him. "I don't have a clue. I hardly spoke to him."

"You look tired sweetheart."

When she cracks an eyelid, he's softened towards her; his hand is reaching out to tame a stray curl.

"Oh I am. I did laps of that joint looking for Coonan and I've got nothing to show for it."

"You tell him that when you see him, and you tell him I don't like it when he keeps my girl waiting."

"I will."

"And I want you to find out about this sap lurking 'round poking his nose into our business."

"How do you suppose I'm going to do that?"

He grins at her. "Baby, you ain't ever had no problems getting the goods from a fella before."

She closes her eyes again and nods once. That's true.

At least, it always has been in the past.

* * *

><p>On Friday, The Butterfly puts on more respectable entertainment for an entirely different crowd. She often wonders what the weekday regulars do on weekends. There's a back room of course, where the girls earn spare change, but it still draws a different kind of customer when those who are lucky enough to have a nine-to-five are done with the drudgery of it. It's the front room that sees the most of the make-shift alterations. The tables are pushed back to line the walls creating a space at the foot of the stage which makes do as a dance floor and the old piano is moved centre stage, sharing the limelight with flashes of brass and up-and-comers on the music scene.<p>

(Tonight it's Lanie Parish, who's beauty rivals her voice. She's black, but she talks smarter than most of the riff raff that hangs around, and Beckett considers her a friend, an equal. They always talk about getting out, about having money and the freedom to do as they please.)

Richard Castle is waiting for her at one of the back tables. He waves her over before she has a chance to talk to Royce, but she doesn't miss the bartender's smirk. When she gets her next drink she'll be sure to tell him he's insufferable when he thinks he's right.

Castle gives her a smile and pushes a martini across the table toward her. The olive bobs in the glass and she watches it and then lets her eyes shift to her companion's face. He's reading her too. And she thinks Royce is wrong; they're at a different kind of mutual purpose. Whatever he's doing here, the detective thinks she can help him. And maybe she can.

(He waxes far too lyrical for someone in his line of work. Her grim experience with the reality of crime might be the perfect foil for his tall stories and sweeping theories.)

He raises his glass and offers her a pleasantry in greeting.

She smiles.

They finish their drinks and the song changes; one of his favourites, he says, as he asks her to dance.

The floor is crowded, so he holds her close, a practical excuse to do so, but for all the cover it provides, his hand remains high on her back. She leans into it, spine arching for his fingers to slip against the silk of her dress just for a moment, before she remembers herself. A wicked thought always invites another though, and she's suddenly impatient to get the information she wants from him by any means necessary.

Her hands run down from his shoulders to the breast pockets of his suit.

"So Mister Castle."

Her fingers creep in patterns and she's looking up at him from under her lashes, fixing on his eyes then his lips then his eyes again like she's thinking about kissing him.

This kind of power, the kind that she has over men, is exhilarating. She never really tires of it, especially when they're clever, like Beckett's decided he is. It's her genuine enjoyment that makes her good at this part. For some women, it's a con from start to finish, but her secret is that by the time she's acting her mark is almost always too far gone to notice.

(He's an exception and he isn't, because with him, she doesn't think she'll have to _act_ like she's enjoying _anything_, if it comes to that. And she's acutely aware of how much she desires that outcome.)

"Yes?" he asks her, reaching up to curl his fingers around hers against his lapel. He shifts her hand, holds it between them.

"There's been something I've been meaning to do all week," she says, soft, and steps into him like a slinking cat. "We've been dancing around each other and I've been meaning to ask you to-"

She edges her mouth towards his and they watch each other until he closes his eyes and she moves to breathe it in his ear. "- tell me, what are you really doing here?"

He opens his eyes.

The look she gives him is imploring and impudent, satisfied and coy, because they both know she's played him.

As the band changes tempo – something slower – he drops her hand. "Okay fine," he says, "I'll tell you."

"You've been meaning to anyway," she wagers, frowning at him over her shoulder when he pulls out her chair for her. "But you were feeling me out first."

They both smirk at the implication of _that_.

"Well rumour has it you run around with some pretty mean fellas. They might not be too keen on what I'm about to ask you see, and I don't want any more trouble than is strictly necessary."

"Well that depends on what you want to know." She pauses, drops the lilt in her tone and says, seriously, "But you don't have to worry about me running to Jimmy on you. Hell, I make enough trouble with him for the both of us."

He nods and looks around the room as he pulls a photograph from the pocket she was pawing on the dance floor. "Do you know a Clara Wood? A source told me she used to work here."

The face is familiar. She runs the pads of her fingers over the shot – Clara, composed, almost stern, and surrounded by what looks like three sisters – and nods. "I recognise her. She didn't go by that name, but they never do."

"Do you remember the last time you saw her?"

"It was a while ago now, a few months at least." She looks up at him. "But it's a revolving door around here. The girls come and go. They get boyfriends or office jobs or they up and join the circus."

"Any idea which it was, in her case?"

Beckett's teeth sink into her carefully painted lip and the photograph catches against the perspiration of their drinks when she tries to slide it back across the table to him. "She was running around with one of Jimmy's boys, Pulgatti, but most of the girls are or were at some point. And he joined his brother up in Sing Sing for taking some poor sucker out for a ride months ago. Come to think of it, it'd be about the same time I last saw her too. Why? Who's asking after her?"

He taps the picture. "Oldest sister. Clara turned up dead a few months ago and the cops weren't making a decent job of finding out what happened to her."

"So you're going to?"

"As best I can."

"Well it wouldn't be the first time one of the boys has lost his temper." She sighs. "I wish I could say it was, but a dead hooker never raised any eyebrows around here or anywhere else."

"Will you help me?" he asks. "If I share what I know with you."

She nearly laughs. "And why would I do that?"

"You've got a soft spot for them." Their hands rest together on the table without touching and he thinks about edging a finger towards hers, but he doesn't, just hesitates on the verge of it. "The dancers I mean. And besides, I'd have thought you'd enjoy the challenge."

"What do you know?" She arches an eyebrow and pulls her hand into her lap and taps her foot where it rests under the table.

"She was found in the East River."

He continues but she stops listening, because that makes it open-shut in her book, but intriguing because it means Jimmy's involved, and directly. No one would ever accuse him of being the brightest of men, but he has a nose for the business and a dead girl with family enough to come looking for her would usually be something he washed his hands of entirely.

Then again, she knows him, well.

And that means she knows something is afoot.

She offers Mister Castle her assistance.

* * *

><p>They meet almost nightly for the next week. She's still waiting on Coonan at the club and Jimmy is cooking up a spot-fixing scam with his illegal bookmaking buddies before baseball season starts so she can work (and play) without drawing much notice.<p>

(When he asks, she feeds Jimmy a story about a husband making trouble for one of the dancers and then he's not at all bothered by the PI's continued patronage.)

She's playing them both though, tightrope walking a line, because Castle has information she wants about what she's convinced is Jimmy's crime, but she's not entirely sure the detective will approve of what she decides to do with it, if and when she decides to do anything at all. And Beckett wants to hide the fact that it might not be as simple as us vs. them for as long as possible, not just because it's a tactical move. She knows part of her is far too concerned with pleasing him and she's fighting it.

This night is easier than most, because they're arguing about his next move, what it should be, and something about how he tries to charm her sets her on edge.

They trade in banter over six martinis, which is four too many. When she declares it time for her evening to end, he's up with her and saying something about walking her out that makes her wary, but he helps her into her coat and precedes her up the stairs despite her protests, which are gin-fuelled and sound less severe to her own ears than they should.

Castle takes her hand to give her help she doesn't need as she ascends the last step, but she lets him, lets him keep holding it when they step outside into the street. The night is crisp but not cold, and the fresh air puts their earlier quarrels to rest. She suddenly feels far less annoyed with him, which is infuriating, in its own way.

It smells of rain and they're eyeing each other, but with more obvious intent than all their other looks. Gin has never affected her much, but now it's practically humming through her, like the coursing blood in her veins and she feels incredibly _aware_ of her body, of her mouth, of his, of the way it's calling to her eyes and her lips.

She breathes and she knows he's waiting, for her to move first, but she doesn't, finds herself unable. It's not because of Jimmy; there's another fear underneath that one. And it's because no one has ever _stopped_ her like this before; in this moment she honestly feels as though apart from the rise and fall of their chests nothing else in the world is moving.

She bows her head. "I should go."

He sighs, thumbs over her hand in a gesture she finds increasingly maddening each time he does it. "Goodnight Miss Beckett."

She chances a glance at his face. "Kate," she corrects him quietly. "Call me Kate."

"Okay. Goodnight Kate."

He drops her hand and steps backwards and she swallows. "Goodnight Mister Castle. I," she pauses, fights the urge to frown at herself. Liquor is a haze that she loves at times and hates at others. "I'll be here tomorrow night."

"Then so will I."

"I guess I'll be seeing you," she says, lips twitching to smile. And really, the way that small promise makes her chest bloom should be a warning. (And it is, but she ignores it because it's a pleasant feeling and she's not had many in the way of those of late.)

"Until tomorrow." His expression is tentative and adoring, and he looks like he wants to reach for her, but he puts his hands in his pockets instead, turns and walks away.

She watches him disappear around the corner before she lets out the breath she's abruptly aware that she's holding and leans back against the grimy wall behind her. Her hand comes away dirty and she's briefly sorry for the state her dress must be in, but not nearly as sorry as she should be. No, most of her regret is split between the fact that she let him walk away and the fact that _that_ is something she regrets.

She walks home wrapped in the fast-slipping hug of gin as it drizzles.

* * *

><p><em>tbc.<em>


End file.
